


Only Something Familiar

by tryslora



Series: All Our Yesterdays [15]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Community: fullmoon_ficlet, Divorce, F/M, M/M, Nervous, Pack Meetings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 10:49:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1004519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryslora/pseuds/tryslora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With things going to hell in Beacon Hills, Jackson finds his way back to the pack and finds that some things are familiar, and some things are decidedly not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only Something Familiar

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written for prompt #39 (Nervous) at fullmoon_ficlet. This series has developed a plot (sorry!). As always, I do not own the world or characters of Teen Wolf, I just like to play with them.

It’s been a long time since Jackson last saw most of the pack. A long time since he’s talked to any of them—other than Allison—over the years since he left Beacon Hills. He refuses to admit that his level of anxiety is rising as he drives down the old dirt road to a house that didn’t exist a decade ago.

When he pulls up along the side of the winding driveway, he recognizes Stiles’s car, and Scott’s car, but the others lined up neatly don’t look familiar except for an old, beaten-up Jeep that sits off to one side, listing slightly on a flat tire.

“You can’t sit in here all night,” Amanda points out quietly from the passenger seat, when Jackson doesn’t move to get out.

“You don’t need to be here,” Jackson reminds her. “This is pack.”

“Which is another word for family, and it seems to me that Angie might like to meet some of her not-exactly-cousins since they’re about her age.” Amanda doesn’t give him a chance to argue as she climbs out of the car and heads to the front door, Angie racing close behind her.

Jackson doesn’t move, rubbing the heel of his hands against his jeans, trying to surreptitiously wipe away the dampness. It won’t matter—the other wolves will still smell the rank, nervous sweat—but it makes him feel better. There is nothing familiar about this place. It doesn’t smell like old ash anymore. It smells like newer construction. It smells like family, and a crash of more scents than he can pick apart just yet. It looks huge… larger than he remembers from the footprint of the old foundation.

It feels wrong in his bones, and that bothers him, too.

He presses his lips together and climbs out of the car, just in time to hear Angie yell happily for Nikki and barrel through the door and disappear inside.

Once Amanda steps in, Jackson sees Derek standing there waiting, the door held slightly open. When Jackson pauses on the stairs, Derek raises one eyebrow and smirks. “Problem, Jackson?”

That’s all it takes to put steel in his backbone. Jackson rolls his eyes. “Of course not,” he says, and heads inside.

The foyer leads directly to a living room that is filled with noise. Stiles sits perched on the back of a recliner, his feet planted on the seat as he leans in to talk to the woman who sits on the arm of it. She glances over as Jackson comes in; her eyes flash red, and Jackson has to stop himself from taking a step backwards. Instead he stands where he is, just inside the room, trying to take in what he sees.

_Her_ , of course, the strange alpha that he doesn’t know. Derek, moving in close to the stranger and bending his head to brush a kiss against her lips. Allison and Scott sprawled on one couch and Nik and Caleb on another. Isaac on the floor, surrounded by small children, Angie among them. There are three little girls other than Angie—ranging in ages from three to seven or so, Jackson would guess—and one infant that Isaac keeps in place while she tries to crawl after the other girls.

A couple comes in through the open doorway on the opposite wall, and Cora smiles at Jackson, waving one hand while she balances a tray of snacks on her other hand. Another werewolf Jackson doesn’t know comes in behind her, one side of his mouth lifting in a curled snarl until Cora smacks his chest and tells him to quit it.

This is a pack. A family. And for all that Jackson knows some of the wolves here, _he_ is the interloper. Himself and his family.

Scott coughs, sitting up, and the room goes quiet. Stiles slides down the back of the recliner into the seat with a soft thud, and the woman draws her feet up, staying perched on the thick arm of the chair.

“It’s all my fault,” Nikki volunteers. “But y’know, thanks for involving me in the pack discussion about my fate. Do I get to be pack if I’m not human? Is that it? Because Scott’s mom’s been pack for ages, and so has Dad, and I _am_ attached to Caleb and all.”

“She’s all yours,” Derek murmurs.

“All Lydia’s, you mean,” Stiles returns, although his fond smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Jackson, stop hovering. It’s irritating, and I know you think you’re lurking menacingly, but you look more like you’re waiting for someone to bite you.”

“This is your ex?” The woman rises smoothly, stepping closer to him, one hand out in a politely human gesture. “I’m Athene. Derek’s wife.”

There’s something implied by the way she says it that Jackson can’t figure out from the words alone, and he doesn’t know her well enough to read the tone. “How many people live here?” He glances up. “This… wasn’t here when I left.”

“Cora and Lance have the west wing,” Derek says.

“Alliance with the Dentremonte pack out of Oregon,” Cora says. “His bark’s worse than his bite.”

“I can talk for myself, little one,” Lance growls softly.

“But I like talking for you.” The conversation goes too low to hear, and feels too personal to eavesdrop. Jackson turns away.

“And I’m the alliance with the Thanos pack in southern California.” Athene’s grin is bright and full of teeth, but at the same time, Jackson doesn’t feel threatened. “We missed crossing paths; I married Derek a year after you left. Isaac and his daughter came to us last year.”

Jackson shifts his stance, finding a way to lean against the wall. “I’ll get a list of the kids later from Angie, I’m sure. This is my sister Amanda, and my niece Angie.”

Scott clears his throat, just the edge of a growl underlining it. “My meeting,” he reminds them; Athene shrugs loosely, and Derek looks like he might laugh. “We’re talking about the rise of trouble in Beacon Hills again. It’s been a long time. Some of us,” he pins Stiles with a look, “thought it was over. But it’s not. Something’s changed, and it looks like we’re becoming a weirdness magnet again.”

“Because _animal attack_ is code for trouble,” Caleb says solemnly. At his father’s _look_ , he adds, “What? I listen!”

It is almost too familiar the way they devolve into discussion. Jackson glances across the room and catches Stiles looking at him. Stiles’s expression twists rueful, and he mouths the words _I tried_ , and Jackson remembers him saying something just like that a long time ago.

More than fifteen years later, and here they are, full circle back into trouble again. Jackson rubs his palm against his jeans, surreptitiously wiping dampness away again, and tries not to worry about how bad it could get.


End file.
